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Whitney Johnson, a Harvard Business Review blogger, has some interesting ideas I think apply to marriage nicely. In Throw Your Life a Curve Johnson talks about the S curve model for understanding how we learn new things.
You start to do something new to improve some aspect of your marriage, or just to make your wife happier. This could be a change of habit, trying to listen better, a new approach to sex, whatever. You start at the lower left of the curve, in the yellow area of the chart above. You are unsure how it’s going to work or exactly what to do. After you struggle for a while, you get the hang of it, and you start to improve rapidly. You get positive feedback from your bride because she is seeing the rapid change; this is the green area. Finally, you have almost mastered what you’re doing, which means there’s not much room to grow or improve. Your wife may stop bragging on you; you may start doing whatever out of habit without much thought, or you may get bored with it. This is the red area.
Each phase has dangers:
- YELLOW: The danger here is giving up. This is the most frustrating part of doing something new. There is little growth, plenty of failure, and little or no recognition of what you’re trying to do. The important thing here is to just keep going.
- GREEN: The greatest danger here is getting a big head. Don’t let your success or her praise cause you to slack off here or in other areas. You need to add this to the other ways you meet her wants and needs. Another danger is thinking that you’re owed something (see Say no to Quid Pro Quo).
- RED: One danger here is backing off just before you master whatever it is you’re doing. Another danger is slipping into autopilot, which means you won’t do as good a job. You might also get so bored you stop doing it, do it less often, or don’t keep doing it as well.
Do you see any of this in your past when you tried to improve your marriage? Do you tend to drop out in the yellow zone? Do you think too much of yourself in the green zone, or think she owes you? Do you get to the red zone and drop what you are doing to start a new curve?
[This post first appeared Nov 29, 2012.]
Image Credit: © Paul H Byerly
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